StopLurkListen:$US16 million for a construct made of 3000 tons of steel 157 meters high?

Miraculous, or someone missed a decimal place or two.

Nope, the advantage of a centrally planned economy combined with executions for graft. The same thing probably works for their military expenditures, which is why I always laugh when dollar comparisons are made.

When those first came out I saw commercials for them and thought they were pretty cool, then I saw them up close and realized in about 2 seconds how they workerd and was completely unimpressed, especially for $200 or whatever they cost.

The movie Stargate was released by the western film industry in 1994. A 10 year long television series soon followed. In the West, in America, no one would have believed in the 2nd decade of the 21st century that this smash hit TV series was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than that of Hollywood producers, and yet as grasping and venal as the culture that created those producers; that as westerners busied themselves about their various concerns the Stargate concept was being scrutinized and studied... With infinite complacency western pseudo-capitalism infiltrated to and fro over the globe, serene in the assurance of empire over the affairs of men. No one gave a thought to the power, stubbornness and fanaticism of the totalitarian overlay of a much older culture, the secret closed sessions of certain all-powerful leaders, as a source of danger to the dominance of western culture. Or, if they did, it was only to dismiss them as the decrepit caretakers of a bankrupt political-economic philosophy even then being assaulted and transformed by the tendrils of private enterprise.

It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, westerners in positions of government fancied that there might be other men of vision in old China, though perhaps scientifically inferior to themselves and ready to welcome the economic progress and increased living standards brought by the capitalist invasions. Yet across the gulf of cultures, critical and desperate minds, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded the accomplishments of the west with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the 21st century came the great disillusionment.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China had a problem: people. Far, far, too many people. And, due to the earlier stupidity of forcing female baby abortions to cut future birth rates, a huge number of those people were males. Young angry males, angry because they could not find suitable women to marry and raise families. The current leaders of China glumly looked at this sexual disparity and correctly realized that it was creating the beginnings of a social upheaval that would, if unchecked, fracture both their power and the fabric of Chinese society.

One of the more influential Central Committee members had a background as a physicist, and quickly fell in love with the Stargate concept. Preparing the ground carefully, marshalling his arguments and rhetoric, amassing damaging information and files on other members who might try and oppose him, he quietly and carefully had private talks with other Committee members, and by 2004 had created a small clique of the powerful and influential. He was then ready to propose to the full Committee a second, fantastic Great Leap Forward: to initiate a massive, secret crash project to develop and exploit a real Stargate, in his prophetic words a Ring of Life, meaning "a round sky and a path leading to a paradise in heaven."

His arguments were four.

First, a successful Stargate would be the ultimately perfect and efficient method of reducing China's population pressure: drive hundreds of millions of peasant colonists through a gigantic Gate to colonize dozens (if not hundreds) of Earth-like worlds. If these worlds were empty of intelligent life, then colonization would be unimpeded. If they were not, a perfect use for the hundreds of millions of soldier-aged males would have been found.

Second, such a scientific coup would forever Shame the west and show the entire world that China, lead by the Chinese Communist Party, was vastly superior to the West.

Third, the exploitation of off-world resources and the expropriation of any technologies discovered would propel China to total economic dominance over the entire Earth.

Fourth, the use of other worlds as secure military staging areas and threat of invasion via Stargate would be the counterpoint "stick" that would insure acceptance of the economic "carrot" offered to the world in point three.

The ex-physicist's plans were sufficiently well laid, his blackmail files sufficiently documented, and his alliance of other Committee members sufficiently solid. The fantastic plan was unanimously adopted in 2004. A totalitarian government, in a society with a 5,000 year tradition of absolute rule, can accomplish things very quickly. Vast sums of money were secretly allocated, and entire cadres of quantum physicists, cosmologists, string theorists, mathematicians and engineers were sworn to secrecy and assigned to the new project. Their marching orders: make the Stargate a reality.

By 2006 mysterious structures began appearing in Dunhuang near the Kumtag Desert. These served two purposes: First, the energies being investigated were immense and dangerous. Both secrecy and safety required remoteness, so the original test facilities were built in Dunhuang. Second, in devious Chinese tradition, huge "nonsense" structures visible to western spy satellites were built nearby to keep the world's intelligence services occupied with fruitless guessing and espionage.

The "best guess" of the Central Committee was that the project would take at least a decade to complete. They were stunned when, in 2008, an 18 year old mathematics genius and Stargate fan at Peking University developed a formula for a dimensional wormhole that could be created and controlled with current technology. This kid had also - from the prolonged absence of several of his professors - deduced that they were all working on a project similar to what he had developed. And, since he was the son of one of the members of the Committee, a test Stargate began operation within a month of his discussions with his father.

Despite precautions, the first 65 attempts were disasters, killing dozens of scientists and hundreds of workers. The main problem was developing a workable calibration and targeting system to keep the wormhole terminus from appearing in the heart of a star or, much more likely, in the vacuum of space. Data from western astronomers identifying likely extra-solar planets was employed, and - by trial and error - a functioning, calibrated and targeted Stargate was eventually connected to a vaguely Earthlike but massive world orbiting HD 40307 some 44 light-years away. What the robotic explorers found there - tremendous quantities of virtually pure and fabulously valuable heavy metals - more than justified the costs of the entire Stargate project.

Concept proven, additional funds were poured into the project, and by 2010 the project had catalogued 108 extra-solar planets, of which 3 were Earthlike in sufficient detail to allow colonization. PLA jet aircraft and helicopters surveyed these three worlds and discovered, on two, no signs of intelligent life, and on one, a species of slow snail-like tool-users that could vaguely be described as barely aboriginal.

Based on these results, the decision was made to build a series of gigantic public Gates. The first one was a 157 meter high metal "art" structure in the city of Fushun, in Liaoning province. The decision was also made to unveil the true nature of this "Ring of Life," the "round sky path leading to a paradise in heaven," on December 21st 2012.....

END OF CHAPTER ONE -- OK, Farkers, take it from here! Communal story!

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